five times Eliot caught Parker, one time he didn't
by themonkeytwin
Summary: "The first time Eliot caught Parker, she was just a kid." – Complete. General sweetness with an angst chaser.
1. kid

**Disclaimer:** not mine, right? Yeah, I knew it was something like that. Oh, and also, I used google translate and take no responsibility for if I accidentally insulted someone's mother horrendously. That wasn't the idea.

**Notes:** pretty much what it says on the tin, yes? We all know how this goes. Except that I'm cheating and most of these times will be from canon. Because my muse needs a kick in the pants (British or American usage, take your pick) and this is easy.

**Spoilers:** for this one, none. Pre-series. But generally assume that if the show has aired an episode, it might be referenced.

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><p><strong>Moscow. Ten years ago.<strong>

The first time Eliot caught Parker, she was just a kid. Red Square, dead of winter and twice as bitter. Even then she was fast, with a knack for disappearing in a crowd. If she hadn't been fifteen and spooked, there was a chance he might have actually lost her.

But as it was, the line she was on took her right through a patch he happened to know drained poorly, and when her feet skidded out from under her on the ice, it was his arms that kept her from landing on her ass. Not to mention from recovering enough to try to stab and/or pickpocket him.

He made sure of his grip and got his first good look under the scruffy hood. "Whoa, whoa – oh..."

She took advantage of his split-second shock to try to break free, but it would take a whole lot more than surprise to loosen his grasp.

"You're – a girl?"

He didn't need the look she gave him to know it was a stupid thing to say, but some things required verbal processing. "But..."

"But _what?_" she snapped, jerking against him, apparently on sheer principle since there was less strength in her skinny body than he had in one arm.

His mind was already rifling through options, and, more urgently, the men he was with who would even now be catching up.

"Where is it?" he asked, ruthlessly and easily shutting out any thoughts of what might happen to this pixie-faced waif in their custody.

She struggled a moment longer, and then, face sullen, indicated her right inside pocket.

With little consideration for decorum, he yanked her coat open and pulled it out, wary of a dummy switch. He eyeballed it for less than a second, but enough to be satisfied that it was the real thing, and tucked it away. As expected, she tried to wriggle free while he did this, but he only tightened his hold around her thin wrists, giving her no slip room at all. She glared defiantly up at him, and if he hadn't been close enough to feel it, he'd have never known about the shiver that ran through her as the wind cut into her clothing.

"Listen," he said, not quite knowing why, even while he efficiently did up her too-large coat, tugged her a little closer, and turned his shoulder against the wind. "Someone sold you out."

He grimaced back at her _no duh_ look. "Okay, whatever." The kid was crazy anyhow, or at least well on her way. It didn't take a genius to spot that there was plenty wrong inside there. And it wasn't his problem. Eliot Spencer wasn't the guy who cared about this sort of thing, he was the guy who got the job done.

The mental map he had of the men's positions told him it was about to become even less his problem, which was why it made no sense that he would slip what he did into her palm.

As the slim, ridged shape of the skeleton key in her hand registered, her eyes widened and locked onto his. He still didn't have any explanation for it, other than: "After about the third double-cross, you start making sure you have a way out of any place the guy who employed you is gonna try to keep you." He frowned, to make sure she got his point. "Even so, you're always on your own."

The cocky twinkle she gave him was almost lost in the chaos as three men closed around them and roughly hauled her out of his reach. Eliot made sure to immediately forget it anyway. He wasn't the guy who cared. He was the guy who, when the asshole team leader barked the question, "вы его взяли?" at him, smirked and held up the merchandise in answer.

He was the guy who got the job done.


	2. twoparter

**Spoilers:** these are events in 1.09 "The Snow Job". Generally assume that if the show has aired an episode, it might be referenced.

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><p><strong>Miami. Four years ago.<strong>

The second time Eliot caught Parker, it was really more of a two-parter. In any case they were both during the same job, meaning they got filed together as far as Eliot was concerned.

It was warm and humid and about as far from a Russian winter as it was possible to be, but that didn't occur to him at the time because he hadn't the slightest idea of trying to catch her. But when twenty pounds of crazy does a swan dive out a second story window at a man's head, reflexes have a way of kicking in.

There was movement in his peripherals, and then all he had time for was "Holy–!" His arms were opening and he had no time to brace before her impact drove them both sprawling into the lawn.

"_Damnit_, Parker –"

She was already rolling off him, before his senses could remind him why this was familar. Half of him was taking stock, making sure nothing was injured, but the louder half of him was bent on scolding her. "A little _warning_ next time! How'd you even know I'd be there?"

"I didn't," she bubbled, unrepentant and much too exhilerated for his liking, and the deep dark archives of his mind flicked up a memory of teenaged eyes and a skeleton key, and the first time he'd broken her fall. His scowl slid into a suspicious look, wondering how much _I didn't_ was really true, or whether there had been some kind of test in there somewhere.

It was not a comfortable thought.

Which was why, several days later, when she copied his question – "What is he _doing?_" – and stormed after Nate in her hospital gown (or, more accurately, stormed after the $100,000 that Nate was giving their not-on-the-hook mark), he hesitated.

But then the instinct to preserve the job, if not Nate's sorry arrogant drunken ass, propelled him off the MRI bed to catch her once more. She skidded into the hospital hallway, arms wide in frustration, and Eliot gave it maybe a second before she launched herself at them and tried to physically wrestle the check back. He wrapped her in a bear hug, making sure to pin both arms, and managed to get her back through the doorway before she started kicking.

He didn't care about Parker and he definitely didn't care about Nate. But there was a veteran in jail for trying to keep a roof over his wife and kid's head, and if nothing else, Eliot was damn sure going to get this job done.


	3. high

**Spoilers:** these are events in 1.10 "The 12-Step Job". Generally assume that if the show has aired an episode, it might be referenced.

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><p><strong>Los Angelos. Four years ago.<strong>

The third time Eliot caught Parker, she was high. She'd spent a week in a rehab center, popping a steady stream of antidepressant cocktails, so it wasn't exactly surprising. His reaction to it, on the other hand, seriously made him wonder if he'd somehow been doped as well. It was the only explanation that made sense.

It was a breezy, gorgeous, low-smog afternoon which did nothing to alleviate the fact that it had been a long, _long_ week on a job that was a thinly veiled excuse for Nate's pathological need to hunt down his own demons in proof that he was a good man. On top of Nate's inevitable self-implosion – which then divided Sophie's attention between running the con and hounding him, further demonstrating why attachments within teams was a dangerous and terrible idea – Eliot had had standoffs with Mexican and Korean gangs, an uncomfortably intimate and long-term relationship with a Chilean car bomb (which had made Hardison blather and bitch even more than usual), and a _very_ uncomfortably intimate experience of Hardison's "gay" voice. He was never going to be able to un-feel Hardison possessively dragging him away from that pretty receptionist.

Not only that, but they'd managed to get inside exactly zero strip clubs. This had been an all-round crappy job, only to end with them _helping_ the mark, the guy who started all this in the first place, where Eliot was just as happy to see him arrested and not their problem anymore. They were supposed to take down the bad guys, not furnish them with new identities and gym memberships. _And_ he couldn't get the smell of burning tire off his hands.

As far as he was concerned, his job was over. He still wasn't sure why he had to come for this in the first place. Nor why, when Nate had called them all out to the car, he hadn't just waved them off and gone to find any one of several charming ladies he knew who wouldn't mind helping scrub him clean of the smell of burnt rubber. Or maybe just gone and got some sleep.

So he stood and waited for Parker outside the rehab center with the others, with his arms crossed so that it was understood how he felt about things.

Her bright, loud, "_Hey!_" when she caught sight of them all startled him out of his brooding, and it had to be the weirdness of her demeanor – weird for Parker, that is – that caused the unfamiliar little tug in his chest. He narrowed his eyes, automatically cataloguing the characteristics of Parker-on-drugs for future reference.

She was running, laughing to see them. When she shuffled her feet playfully on the path, apparently for the sheer fun of it, whatever it was about it tugged on him again. He felt like he should be annoyed by this kind of behavior, just on principle if nothing else, and that made him realize that he wasn't. More worryingly, he could feel his spirits lifting in response to hers. Which was when he shot a frown at the others, partly to judge how they were reacting to her in this state, but mostly to see if any of them were smirking at having managed to drug him too.

"I missed you guys!" she trilled, still laughing, and he saw her coming with plenty of time to avoid it if he wanted to. She tossed the bag of her belongings to Nate and Eliot was moving at the same time, and he'd never noticed before how much the last year had taught them to work in tandem. But for some reason he wasn't moving to ward her away from him; his legs were bracing as hers were leaping, his arm going wide, giving her as much landing space on his chest as she wanted.

In the moment before she hit, he wondered if catching her twice before was enough to have made it more habit than choice.

The moment she did, it wasn't the physical impact that made him stagger. As she wrapped herself tightly, trustingly around him, with a girlishly happy giggle in his ear, something frighteningly like gladness flooded through him. It made his arm – which had, like the rest of him, instinctively mirrored her actions to wrap around her back – clutch her more firmly. It made it impossible to resent the grin on Sophie's face. It made him realize he liked that, out of the whole team, she headed for him first. It made it momentarily hard to speak.

"Whoahh, yeah..." he gasped out, reaching for a scowl that wasn't coming as she clung to him. "When do the happy pills wear off?" he asked with slight desperation, not quite sure if he was asking for her or for himself.

"Ah, usually about 24 hours," Nate answered absently, as Parker slid off Eliot and headed for Hardison. Eliot couldn't tell which of those things contributed more to his sense of relief, but he knew one thing: this job had better be well and truly _done_.


	4. trapped

**Spoilers:** these are events in 3.03 "The Inside Job". Generally assume that if the show has aired an episode, it might be referenced.

**Notes:** Before we go much further, I should note for all the E/P shippers out there that I'm not intending to take this story that way (although I'm sure if you really want to you can read into that way), and that I'm likely in the next installment or two to reference P/H as it seems to be developing in canon. (I'm not really a shipper of any kind.) Hopefully that won't ruin your enjoyment of the story, but I just wanted to warn you. :)

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><p><strong>Boston. Two years ago.<strong>

The fourth time Eliot caught Parker, she was trapped. And he was furious.

It was broad bright daylight in downtown Boston and they were breaking into a forty-story building – _on the fly_ – to get Parker out. A building that was protected by the damn _Sterenko_, which Nate had just ordered him to _climb_.

It's not that Eliot didn't get it. He wasn't arguing about the principle; they were family, and he got it. Hell, over a year ago he'd already offered to kill for her, largely on impulse, and that kind of thing was reserved for family only. This was what you did for family, what you did when something belonged to you. He knew all about that, and by now he had accepted that included all of them, even Hardison. He'd even accepted that Parker was crazy, and it wasn't going to change.

It was when her crazy spilled over into the entire team – the team that currently had more members _inside_ the deathtrap than out of it, and all of them beyond the range of his protection – that he had serious issues with it all. It wasn't that he didn't know what Parker was doing; after all, this is what you did for family, and it mystified him that the others (except Sophie, sometimes) had such trouble getting what went on in her head, or found her "home" surprising. Eliot had a very good idea of how far she'd go for family, and Archie's _No idea what she was thinking_ just made him want to punch the old man, regardless of how much he meant to Parker.

He rode the slow-assed window washing scaffold up the face of the building toward the hole Hardison had located, stewing as Parker's father figures got into a pissing contest about what to do with her and the inside job that had set her up, and tamping down the desire to give her a shaking she wouldn't forget in a hurry when he did finally catch her.

Finally he heard it in his ear – "_Eliot, she's coming out hot, are you in position?_" – and he flipped his crowbar impatiently. "Yeah I'm in position! _She's_ the one that –"

Through the window he saw her slip into the room. The relieved grin she gave him mollified his temper a little, and he focused on that rather than how the tight knot in his chest, which he'd been ignoring since this whole thing started, loosened too. "Nevermind, scratch that. There she is." He tapped the window, and he could swear the words came out with more concern than he actually felt when he cautioned her to move away. He just didn't want to have her bleeding from glass shards along with everything else, especially now that she was almost in reach of him and their exit.

Of course, when the damn fool girl ignored him, he stopped feeling any concern at all. "Parker, _move!_"

"No ... no, I can't!" she said, eyes wide when they met his.

Dimly Eliot heard Archie ask her what she was doing, a question Eliot could have answered himself if he had any inclination to explain the stupidly obvious to idiots even _if_ he weren't completely infuriated and getting just a little bit desperate. He slammed the rail. "This is no time for crazy, alright! We gotta get the hell out of here!"

"I have to go back!" she exclaimed, launching into the unnecessary explanation for apparently everyone who wasn't him, and ending on, "– we need proof."

"What proof?" he asked discouragingly, in a last ditch effort to make her realize her own crazy, but she only answered exactly the way he was afraid she would.

"I have to go back and steal the blight."

Eliot stopped wasting his breath, because he could see how this was going to go, no matter how suicidal it was. The others didn't, though, and there was a whole commotion of wasted breath on the comms before everyone was on the same page, and Nate gave Parker her head to finish the job.

She caught Eliot's eye and grinned gleefully, as though she had absolutely no concept what she was dragging them all into – for the _second_ time that day – even as he shook his head _don't_. It didn't make a difference, of course; she turned and dove right back into the aptly-termed deathtrap, leaving him behind to throw his hands out in sheer exasperation.

When he caught up with her in the hall, he'd rarely felt such cathartic satisfaction in hitting _anyone_ as he got from punching the security guard Parker had maneuvered around for him. The smile she gave him was entirely too pleased with herself – entirely too sure that he would be there, come for her, catch her once more – and he scowled. It only made her smile widen, which only made his jaw clench. Pretty much nothing that was going to come out of his mouth by now was going to be at all civil, so he silently gestured at her to get on with it, and took up station at her shoulder.

If they had to do this job, he was going to rip the entire _building_ a new one.


	5. crying

**Spoilers:** none.

**A/N:** moving on into the future! This is set maybe a year/year-and-a-half from the current show timeline (S4 hiatus). Almost done. Providing RL doesn't return to doing the RL things it has been for the last few weeks, hopefully the last installment will be up soon. No promises, though. Thanks for reading!

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><p><strong>Boston. One month ago.<strong>

The fifth time Eliot caught Parker, she was crying. Which meant someone was in for a _world_ of pain. It wasn't as though it was hard to make certain things look like an accident.

He'd noticed something off in her about a week ago, around the time the first snowfall hit the city. Not even scraps were left on the ground now, not really surprisingly, but it had been a good heavy one and he had secretly hoped it boded well for a white Christmas in another week. A hope which he'd still deny until he was blue, if anyone accused him of it, but he'd at least given up pretending to himself that he didn't love the look on Parker's face when it happened. Which may or may not be why he had been paying enough attention to her to notice the tension, when no one else had.

He'd first suspected Hardison as the culprit, since he'd been expecting some kind of meltdown ever since the two had made their odd, slow-growing relationship "official," but the last few months had shown the hacker to be unexpectedly good at navigating the unique challenges of dating Parker. The last week had only confirmed Eliot's suspicions that something was wrong, but nothing Hardison seemed to be aware of, and by now Eliot trusted Hardison's instincts enough that he'd at least know when he'd screwed up with her.

Which left Eliot to just bide his time and keep closer tabs than usual; she was spending unusual amounts of time at Nate's perched in hiding places that were high or cramped or both, while forcing a care-free appearance around the team. He had to hand it to her, she was getting better. If he hadn't been watching for it, he wasn't 100% sure he would have noticed. He _probably_ would, but maybe not.

So when he got to Nate's that afternoon, eyeing the heavy clouds in the frigid sky and willing them to break open, he wasn't completely surprised to find he wasn't as alone as he'd expected to be. Even before he hung up his jacket, his ears picked up the sound of muffled girl misery which, no matter how it was disguised, was a very distinctive sound. His stomach dropped while his eyes scanned the unlit apartment, quickly finding the tiny crack of light streaming from the bathroom door.

The flash of temptation to run away, go find Sophie or something, was quickly squelched and he very sternly put his mental processes on alert; he had to be on the job for this one. It would demand nothing less of him than total commitment. He took a controlled breath, and slowly pushed the door open.

No squeals of feminine indignation met him, and that was a relief, but it didn't last long when he spotted her balled up in the empty bathtub, fully clothed, curtain tangled around her, sobbing as though her heart was broken. A _world_ of pain, he silently promised himself.

Eliot didn't bother announcing his presence; she hadn't looked up but he knew she knew he was there. He just climbed into the tub with her – there was plenty of room, she could make the tightest ball with her body of any adult he'd ever known – put a hand on her foot, and waited. He didn't have to wait long, although he didn't expect her to uncurl from the curtain and fling herself into his arms. Still, his body had long since figured out the correct reflex for that action, and he just hugged her close while attempting to arrange limbs into a slightly less uncomfortable configuration.

"What?" he asked quietly, once he was pretty sure he could sustain their position for the duration of a conversation. Her sobs had failed to subside, and he rubbed her back, keeping his voice as comforting as he could. "Parker, what is it?"

The question only made her cry harder into his chest, and he had to fight down panic before he realized her hand had unclenched and was showing him something in what appeared to be an answer. He tilted his head to try and make it out, and it took a few seconds for his brain to register the significance of two pink lines on a little white stick.

"Uhh ..." was all that came out of him before his whole body froze, which was a good thing because his entire brain had simultaneously exploded, and he didn't want to know what he would have said if he could have. "Okay," he said, once he regained the use of his mouth and wrestled his reaction under control, "uh – okay. Um." He shook his head a little, trying to clear out all the superfluous or unhelpful questions all yelling at once, like those horrible crowds of reporters at movie premiers or sensational press conferences. "So. It. Um. – Hardison?"

Her tiny nod was felt rather than seen, and the tremble that ran through her helped him focus. "Okay. It's okay," he murmured, and after a few minutes of rubbing her back and repeating variations of "it's okay," she began to calm down enough to actually speak.

"Eliot, what am I going to do?" she wailed weakly.

He slammed a lid on the fresh wave of questions. "Well, what's the problem?" he asked neutrally, so as not to indicate how many were suggesting themselves to him right now.

"I can't do this!" For the first time, she raised her head from his damp shirt and looked at him, and his stomach fell all over again at the real terror in her eyes. "I can't – I can't be a _mom!_ I don't know ... I can't ... everything's wrong with me, Eliot, I'm crazy, you know that, _I can't be a mom!_"

She was clutching him hard enough to bruise, fingers made for climbing digging into his muscles, and shaking him to boot, but he barely felt it. "_You are not_ –"

He broke off, stopping himself in the middle of that angry, well-meaning lie, and her face fell. He caught it in his hand, and forced her to look at him, all the heat of his anger channeled into utter certainty. "Okay. Maybe there are a few things wrong with you, and maybe you are crazy. But there is nothing – _nothing_ – about you that would make you a bad mom, Parker. And you _know_ that's true because I would be the first one to tell you if it wasn't."

He saw hope dawn, and then dim again. "But what if..."

He stroked his thumb on her cheek gently, chasing that hope to retrieve it back. "What if what?"

She looked down. "What if Hardison doesn't think so?" she whispered.

_Ah_. He tucked her head back against his chest, and dropped a kiss on the top of it. "Well, then, you'll have plenty of help from the rest of us," he said with unmistakeable sincerity, leaning back more comfortably and drawing her with him.

She burrowed further into his cuddle, arms relaxing against him for the first time. She drew in a breath that went all the way down to her belly, already trusting him even as she asked, "You promise?"

"Are you kidding?" He grinned. "Good luck keeping us away." He felt her little snort, which made him frown and stretch over to the toilet roll which was, luckily, in reach. "Here," he put a wad of tissue in her hands. "Stop using my shirt as a kleenex."

Parker stuck her tongue out at him, but obediently scrubbed at her face, blowing several times before tossing it into the waste basket.

"Ooph!" Eliot exclaimed as her exertion squashed his diaphragm.

Her body froze and she gave him an uncertain look, as the fullness of their position suddenly struck her. She bit her lip, clearly wondering if he was going to be annoyed. He rolled his eyes, just to make sure she knew this was not something that was going to be tolerated on a regular basis, before shrugging slightly and pulling her back down against him. After all, he couldn't deny that this was a pretty special occasion. Besides, the job wasn't done yet.

She snuggled happily as he settled his arms securely around her, and he smiled, although only because he knew she wouldn't see it. He thought for a minute, then opened his mouth again.

"Parker, I can't say I know what Hardison will think about all of ... this," he said carefully; he didn't want to raise expectations too much. "But did it occur to you that he might be happy?"

She went quiet. "He never – we never talked about... You think so?" she asked after a painful pause.

"I can't say for sure," Eliot admitted honestly, although he had a pretty good idea. "I know sometimes it's easier to just assume the worst, but ... I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Don't you?"

After another long pause, she nodded. "Will you help me? Figure out how to tell him?"

He cocked his head, resolutely ignoring what a hopeless softie he had become. "Well, Christmas is coming up," he said thoughtfully, and she bounced up excitedly – to another of his _oophs_ – as she caught his meaning. He couldn't stop his grin at the sparkle in her eyes, and it was some time and a lot of scheming before they left that bathtub.

A week later, Eliot discovered the wondrous expression on Parker's face when it began snowing for Christmas was absolutely nothing to the expression on Hardison's face when he learned he was going to be a father. Even though it was a surprisingly competitive list, there was no comparison: this was, without doubt, Eliot's favorite job he'd ever done.


	6. hunted

**Spoilers:** none.

**Warning:** Angst with suggestions of badassery. (Probably should have warned everyone earlier? Sorry. It's in the summary now, if that helps!)

**A/N:** This took _forever_ to take shape. It was actually the first scene I thought of, and the reason I wanted to write this series. But it's up now! And complete! Woohoo!

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><p><strong>Cairo. Now.<strong>

The one time Eliot doesn't catch Parker, she is being hunted.

The night air is crisp, cool, all but suppressing the scent of dust and sand clinging to the city, a scent he sometimes feels is mostly ghosts and memories and the abiding promise of the desert. He sniffs again, catching the unmistakeable smell of the water of the Nile; from his very first visit, years before, the river has been his fallback to navigate the endlessly sand-colored jumble of buildings and epochs it has tangled up upon its banks.

However, finding a fleeing Parker within the late-night racket of the streets, with their defiant riot of colorful lights, and equally colorful population, will take a whole lot more than that. Which would be why they made it _his_ job.

He slips across the street, ignoring the ugly flares of tightness in his gut, running cold calculations in loops to quash churning-hot hindbrain desperation, raking his eyes continuously through the swirling crowds. He long ago plotted detailed path-projections for each team member in their frequented cities, based on their previous known behavior: their targets, hideouts, contacts. Tracking people or things by the trail of where they had gone was workable enough, in a pinch, but Eliot always prefered figuring out where they were going to _be_. And intercepting them on his own terms.

Of course, they don't know any of that. They just know he is Eliot Spencer; he is the one man who can get the job done. The men hunting Parker just know that if they managed to capture Eliot, dose him with slow-acting poison they hold the antidote for, along with a locator beacon powerful enough to broadcast from somewhere in his digestive system, and hold the rest of his team hostage, then at all costs, he will catch her. He has to hand it to this enemy of Parker's – and he would really, really like to know who that is, not to mention how the _hell_ he'd pulled this off – the guy certainly has the brutally ruthless methodology of the region's lowlifes down. Although the poison thing is a new twist; Eliot is more familiar with the explosives-with-remote-detonator form of coercion. Given the choice, Eliot probably wouldn't have picked poison, but it does afford greater freedom of operation. Until losing the use of his limbs, anyway, but they said he'd retain that at least until sunrise. Probably.

Further along, the city block opens out to a distant flash of a wide, mercifully non-sand-colored building, the landmark he's been angling toward. The museum is big, domed, unrelentingly red, and by his calculations – and even more, his instincts – the most likely place Parker will retreat to, under pressure.

It takes him less than twenty minutes to circle around, scrutinizing the building's entrances, public, private, and roof-related, for the telltale signs that his cat burgler has passed through. To the best of his knowledge of her tactics and habits, she hasn't. He settles into a casual prowl along what he's judged to be her favorite line of approach, blending easily into the patterns of street traffic. And he waits.

The second hour-mark passes since they released him onto the streets, and it's harder not to second-guess himself. It's been a long time since his mental compartments have taken this kind of strain, and he's rusty in it; it feels like he's being torn in every direction at once. There are too many objectives, too many variables and unknowns for him to be able to formulate any real plan that would keep everything else at bay. And it's taking more effort than ever before to keep irrelevancies to the job on lockdown; things like the image of Sophie still unconscious on the dirty floor of a cell, and the looks in Nate and Hardison's eyes above their gags, and the terror of this faceless foe nipping at Parker's heels, of what would happen to her if he can no longer catch her fall.

Eliot stamps hard on that burgeoning mass of panic, when a movement half-catches in his peripheral vision – screamingly disctinctive to his eyes even among the throng – setting off a flash of internal alarms, a fresh flood of adrenaline. He forcibly stops his head from whipping in that direction, giving away his surveillance; instead, he lets his movement turn him naturally, so that her path will travel into his eyeline.

Nor does he charge over to her, in spite of every muscle in his body straining to do just that. He keeps moving, allows his glance to roam around their position, mapping the places of each of the men that his procedural prowling had revealed were following him; they had him pretty well triangulated. And then there was the fourth man, hanging further back, who Eliot is pretty sure he isn't supposed to have noticed at all: insurance for if he somehow manages to spot and elude the others. Again, he has to hand it to the guy behind this, whoever he is – he knows he is dealing with Eliot Spencer, and he is taking very few chances.

He watches, but it doesn't surprise him that they haven't seen her. Her head covering makes recognition difficult for anyone not versed in every motion and gesture of each of his teammates. All he has to do is keep himself from drawing attention by watching her like a hawk, and pray that he has guessed her route correctly. That she will see, and understand, one of the signs he's left in the few blindspots he was able to find.

She turns into an alleyway and pauses slightly. Hope catches in his throat; her lightning-quick check of the street around her confirms it. He avoids her sight, peeling away on a random circuit of the perimeter he has established, as much misdirection as double-checking his tails. He keeps to his previous pace, resisting every spur of worry that she won't stay with the crude rendezvous mark, that she'll take fright and run, that she won't trust him. He grits his teeth; never in his life has he felt so much like he's driving with the parking brake on, not even when he _had_. He shoves the urgency down even further, refusing to give those watching the slightest hint that the quarry is near. Even if it means losing her.

He stumbles, easing up some control on the muscular pangs and cramps, letting them dictate his movements more to disguise any oddities in his behavior. He adds some muttering for good measure; drawing a hand over his face in pain and nearly stepping in front of an oncoming car is more than enough reason to slump against the corner of the building at the alley mouth, although he wishes that shaking his head to clear his vision was also staged.

"Eliot –"

"_Stay_," he snaps in the direction of her voice from the shadows around the corner, shaking out his head again to mask it, as well as the intense wave of relief breaking through him. "Right where you are," he mutters further, taking his time to check the men's positions again.

"What –"

He sags a little more for cover, encouraged that they are far away enough that they can speak somewhat freely. "In a minute."

She obeys, for once, and he wants to hug her for it. He draws a breath against a flush of nausea, then says, "I'm being watched. We don't have much time. Can you tell me who's after you?"

Her voice becomes all business. "I think so. Ndaji. He's –"

Eliot cuts her off, even as part of him starts revising details into the threat matrix. "Got it. Heard of him. I need you to ... to go to Plan Z."

He can feel her shock. "Eliot, Plan Z was just a joke ... wasn't it?"

"It was," he confirms, eyes still roving as though searching the crowds for her, keeping tabs on the men. "Not anymore."

"But –"

"Parker ... _please_." He is nearly whispering now, an effort to keep the emotion out of his tone.

Her voice shakes. "Eliot, Plan Z means that the others are –"

His voice firms. "I'll take care of them. That's my job. And I'm going to do it, Parker, I promise. I _promise_. But I can't do it unless I know you're safe."

It feels like forever, suspended between objectives, before she says, "Okay."

The moment she does, his plan of attack coalesces, unfurling before him with crystal clarity. Just as soon as he can get her gone. He does not waste time. "Go. Now. I'll keep an eye on my tail, but there might be more guys in the area. If the others don't meet up with you by noon, you _leave_, you understand?"

"Yes."

"Do you promise?" he asks, and he's burning focus to keep his whole world from collapsing down to this one answer.

Excruciatingly, she pauses. "You're going to be with them." It's trying not to be a question, a plea. "Eliot? You're going to be with them. Aren't you?"

He doesn't have to feign the crumple of his shoulders. Why did this have to matter? He scrubs his face, then returns to his vigil of the street. "I'm ... gonna try. Parker. _Promise me_."

He can hear her deep, painful breath. "I promise."

Eliot shatters for an instant, then pulls everything back together, building all he has left upon the scaffolding of the job ahead of him. "Thank you," he whispers, though he doesn't mean to. It's a silly thing to worry about now, but he hopes she didn't hear him. "Go," he says more firmly.

His hyper-alert ears hear the hesitation, and the moment she turns and heads away. He waits several more minutes, until he's sure the men detected neither her presence nor her departure, and he allows himself one small smile.

If it's the last thing he ever does, this job is getting done.

* * *

><p>Once again, I will affirm that<strong> this story is complete.<strong> I don't know if he survives (my guess is as good as yours). Speculation welcome but I'm not going to write it :)


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